Spring2011 newsletter V2

8/7/2019 Spring2011 newsletter V2

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University of Montana: Computer Science Newsletter

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COMPUTER SCIENCE

Special Issue: Faculty ResearchSpring 2011

Inside this Issue

Research Projects:

Plus Achievements and

Recent Publications

As the Spring semester is

now in full-swing, we find

ourselves as busy as ever. We

wished Alden Wright Bon

Voyage as he headed to New

Zealand to do a semester of

research at the University of

Otago, we ushered in a brand

new department website

(http://www.cs.umt.edu) and

blog that we hope is more

user friendly and up-to-date,

we are meeting new

classmates from MSU as we

host our graduate levelCryptography course through

distance learning

technologies, we welcome

two new adjunct instructors

to teach Networking and

Computer Graphics, and

we are planning for

upcoming events like the

Montana State Science Fair.

We hope to get more

involved this semester with

both the Undergraduate

Research Conference and the

Graduate Faculty Research

Conference and are actively

encouraging our students to

participate. We continue to

share information about a

number of promising

internship opportunities, and

are pleased to report that ourcomputer club remains

vibrant. The remainder of this

special issue is devoted to

faculty research.

Taking Blackfoot speeches as

input, the system generates a listof audio clips containing a

sequence of sounds or certain

accent patterns

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In cloud computing, heavy

computations on data are

outsourced to "the cloud" overthe Internet.

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randomly generated RNAsequences and their afnity for a

particular protein (nucleocapsid

protein (N) from River ValleyFever Virus (RVFV)).

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The unstructured mesh (blacktriangles) delivers resolution

where it is needed, but reduces

computational overhead inregions ofslower change.

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Results of this study indicate that

participants have a strong

preference for software that

reduces the need for excessprogram window

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Genetic algorithms are

computational methods based onthe biological concepts ofgenetics and evolution.

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University of Montana: Computer Science Spring 2011

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Dr Min Chen: Blackfoot Linguistic Preservation

An example speech transcriptionand audio analysis

Cryptographic Objects: Dr. Mike Rosulek

In cloud computing, heavy computations

on data are outsourced to "the cloud"over the Internet. One importantcryptographic challenge for cloud

computing is providing data privacy, theability for the cloud to carry out the

computation, and an assurance to theuser that the cloud indeed performed thedesired computation. One approach to

cloud computing is for users to

encrypt their data, and for the cloud

to perform blind computations on

that encrypted data. However,

existing encryption techniques havenot easily allowed blind

computations as well as enforced

data integrity.

Dr. Mike Rosulek's recent

research has developed newencryption techniques that allowvery simple computations to beblindly carried out on encrypteddata, but in a way that forces the

cloud to perform only the

desired computation. Futurework in this area involvesexpanding the feature-set ofthese robust computations on

encrypted data.

Supported by an NEH grant, we are in the process of developing a multimedia database system to automaticallycapture and manage interesting sound clips in Blackfoot (an endangered language spoken in Alberta, Canada,

and Montana) for language preservation. Taking Blackfoot speeches as input, the system generates a list ofaudio clips containing a sequence of sounds or certain accent patterns based on research interests. Existingcomputational linguistic techniques such as information processing and artificial intelligence are extended totackle issues specific to Blackfoot linguistics, and database techniques are adopted to support better datamanagement and linguistic queries.


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DR. Jesse Johnson is working with colleagues in UM Geoscience

to develop an ice sheet model capable of combining the best

available observations with detailed physical descriptions of the ice.

Once the data has been 'assimilated', the model can be used to assessthe impact of climate change on the ice sheet's stability. Model output

in this figure of Greenland shows the results of a recent assimilationof satellite derived surface velocity data into the model. The

unstructured mesh (black triangles) delivers resolution where it is

needed, but reduces computational overhead in regions of slower

change. Ultimately, the purpose of models like Johnson's is todetermine the amount of sea level change that ice sheets produce.

Ice Sheet Modeling

Identification of

Ribonucleac Acid

Functional Structure

In collaboration with partners in the Biochemistry Department,

several of the graduate students and Dr. Douglas Raifordwill begin investigating methods of identifying common

secondary (and possibly tertiary) structures of functionally similar

RNA sequences.

This work will involve the analysis of experimentally derived dataon randomly generated RNA sequences and their affinity for aparticular protein (nucleocapsid protein (N) from River ValleyFever Virus (RVFV)). All of the resulting RNA sequences will

have a known affinity for this protein (aptamer status) and it willbe our job to identify their secondary structures as well as

common structural features, the implication being that thesesecondary structures (and their resultant tertiary structures) are

responsible for the sequence's high affinity for the target protein.

Algorithmic approaches will include calculation of tree edit

distances, dynamic programming techniques for identifyingminimum energy states, as well as clustering and classifier

algorithms.


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Dr. Alden Wrightis currently doingfinal revisions on the paper On theMovement of Vertex Fixed Points in theSimple GA which will be published in theproceedings of the FOGA 2011 workshop.This paper concerns a dynamical systemmodel of the simple genetic algorithm.Genetic algorithms are computationalmethods based on the biological concepts

of genetics and evolution.

Dr. Wright is also working with Dr. Raiford (of the CS department) and Dr.Holben (of the Division of Biological Sciences) on metagenomics, which is theexciting field of analyzing DNA sequence information taken fromenvironmental samples.

Dr. Wright is currently visiting the University of Otago in Dunedin, NewZealand. He has a blog about his personal activities at http://oldmtnbiker.wordpress.com

FACULTY

ACHIEVEMENTS

Dr. Douglas Raiford's

research was featured as the coverart for IEEE/ACM Transactions on

Computational Biology andBioinformatics, June 2008 issue.

Dr. Joel Henry

was recently recertified as an IEEE

Software Development

Professional. There are only about450 people worldwide with this

certification, and Joel is the onlyone in Montana. Dr. Henry also had

a paper entitled entitled

MATTLAB Automated Test Tool(MATT) accepted for publication

in the NASA Tech Briefs magazine.This magazine highlights those

products and processes proven

effective in critical NASA missions.Additionally, MATT has been

nominated for an Excellence inTechnology award within NASA

based on five years of integration

into NASA projects.

GIG:

GlobalInformation

Gatherer

Dr. Yolanda Reimer continues work on her Career grant research

involving information management, assimilation, and notetaking in the

digital age. With the GIG software prototype implemented and fully

functional, her research group recently completed a longitudinal and

unrestricted evaluation of its utility with two large sections of aManagement Information Systems class. Results of this study indicatethat participants have a strong preference for software that reduces the

need for excess program window manipulation, that provides citation

support and integrated web browsing, and that incorporates a progressiveuser interface design. On the third and final survey of our evaluation, we

learned that a majority (over 70%) of participants thought that GIG ishelpful for managing and making sense of the large volume of

information they are exposed to everyday. A manuscript describing this

evaluation is currently under review with JASIST, Journal of theAmerican Society for Information Science and Technology.
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University of Montana: Computer Science Newsletter

Department of Computer Science

[Social Science Building Room 401][The University of Montana][Missoula], [MT][59812]

[Phone: 406-243-2883]

[FAX: 406-243-5139][Email: [email protected]]

Chen, M. (in press) Temporal-based video event detection and retrieval. In C.-H. Wei (Ed.), Machine learning techniques for adaptive multimediaretrieval: technologies applications and perspectives, IGI Global.

Chen, M., Chen, S.-C., & Shyu, M.-L. (in press) Content-based retrieval of video. P. Sheu, H. Yu, C.V. Ramamoorthy, A. Joshi, & L. Zadeh (Eds.),

Semantic computing, IEEE Press/Wiley.

*D.J. Brinkerhoff, T.W. Meierbachtol, J.V. Johnson, J.T. Harper, (2011) Sensitivity of the frozen-melted basal boundary to perturbations of basaltraction and geothermal heat flux: Isunnguata Sermia, western Greenland, Annals of Glaciology, vol. 59 pp. XX XX (in press).

R. Calov, R. Greve, A. Abe-Ouchi, E. Bueler, P. Huybrechts, J.V. Johnson, F. Pattyn, D. Pollard, C. Ritz, F. Saito, L. Tarasov (2010) Results fromthe Ice- Sheet Model Intercomparison ProjectHeinrich Event INtercOmparison (ISMIP HEINO). Journal of Glaciology vol. 56 (197) pp. 371-383.

Raiford, Douglas W., Doom, Travis E., Krane, Dan E., & Raymer, Michael E. 2010. A genetic optimization approach for isolating translationalefficiency bias. Accepted for publication in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, 11 February, 2010. IEEEcomputer Society Digital Library, IEEE Computer Society.

Raiford, Douglas W., Krane, Dan E., Doom, Travis E., Raymer, Michael L. Automated Isolation of Translational Efficiency Bias that Resists theConfounding Effect of GC(AT)-Content, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, 19 June 2008. IEEE ComputerSociety Digital Library. IEEE Computer Society, 30 June 2008.

Reimer, Y.J., *Hagedal, M., & *Wolf, P. (2010). Evaluating a Global Information Gathering Tool for Students. Proceedings of E-LEARN 2010 -World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare & Higher Education, Orlando, Florida, October 2010, pp. 2688-2695.Chesapeake, VA:AACE.

Reimer, Y.J., *Brimhall, E., *Cao, C., & *OReilly, K. (May 2009). Empirical User Studies Inform the Design of an E-Notetaking and InformationAssimilation System for Students in Higher Education, Computers & Education Journal 52, pp. 898-913. DOI information: 10.1016/j.compedu.2008.12.013

H.K. Maji, M. Prabhakaran, M. Rosulek. Attribute-Based Signatures. To appear, CT-RSA: RSA Conference, Cryptographers' Track 2011.

H.K. Maji, M. Prabhakaran, M. Rosulek. Exploring the Limits of Common Coins using Frontier Analysis of Protocols. To appear, Theory ofCryptography Conference (TCC) 2011.

Jonathan E. Rowe, Michael D. Vose, Alden H. Wright. Representation Invariant Genetic Operators Evolutionary Computation Winter 2010, Vol.

18, No. 4: 635660.

Alden H. Wright, Tomas Gedeon, J. Neal Richter. On the Movement of Vertex Fixed Points in the Simple GA Proceedings of the eleventh ACMSIGEVO workshop on Foundations of Genetic Algorithms, Hans-Georg Beyer and William Langdon (editors), ACM, 2011.

Select Faculty Publications* Indicates Computer Science student

[more complete list found at: http://www-test.cs.umt.edu/faculty_and_research/publications.php]

Donations to the department can be made throughthe UM Foundation at The University of MontanaFoundation, P.O. Box 7159, Missoula, MT59807-7159, or online at http://www.umt.edu/UMf/. Make sure to designate your donation to theComputer Science Department. Donations can beused to set up scholarships for students or supportthe department, its resources, and its students inmany other ways. We thank you!
http://www.umt.edu/UMf/http://www.umt.edu/UMf/http://www.umt.edu/UMf/http://www.umt.edu/UMf/http://www.umt.edu/UMf/

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